PC will not boot into XP after using PartitionMagic (was going to put a 2nd OS on)

I've been frustrated over this problem for hours now. I'm planning to sell a Gateway PC I have to a friend of mine, and she wanted it to be able to dual boot with XP and Vista. It has XP (Media Center Edition) preinstalled, which I kept as the XP she requested. I have partitioned out drives before, but the most experience I've had in allocating free space to a separate partition (rather than just wiping the drive) was using Vista's disk manager. Since I'm using XP as a starting point, I had to go with 3rd party software. I believe this is an older software by the way; PartitionMagic 8.0.

In PartitionMagic, I chose to divide out about half (90 GB) of the remaining free space on C: where XP is installed to a new NTFS partition labelled VISTA on the J: drive, which was the first drive letter listed to choose from. I didn't think of this until much later, but it's possible that the J: drive letter may have been previously assigned, since this PC has several readers for flash memory, as well as a DVD drive, and factory partition; though the factory partition must be fine, otherwise I wouldn't think the PC would boot up with the Gateway logo and all. I had just been somewhat under the assumption that PartitionMagic would at least give me some sort of warning if I were trying to create a partition on a drive letter that was in use, though later I was looking thru PartitionMagic's readme and it mentioned that you should take note of drive letters that are in use beforehand, which gave me that worry. After configuring these settings, I was prompted to reboot and I did so.

Upon the next reboot, I was greeted with a blue Windows XP splash screen and white text stating something along the lines of PartitionMagic doing its job and the progress, and then after suprisingly not too long (5 mins or so), another message came up that I now regret not reading very well and I was prompted to hit either "any key" or enter, and I did so. After that, the PC rebooted again and since then, I've been getting the black screen message that asks you "boot in safe mode", "last known good configuration", or "start Windows normally". It doesn't matter which of those options I choose; Windows will not boot at all now. The "Windows XP" loading screen with the progress bar will appear briefly and then it will be replaced by a message on a blue screen that flashes by so quickly, I can't read a word of it. Then the PC will reboot itself again, and it will continue doing this in a loop.

I've done plenty of Google searches and can't find any answers. I can't use the PartitionMagic "recovery discs" because no PC I am working with has a floppy drive. Recently I configured BIOS to boot from CD-ROM first and put in my own XP operating system disc to use Windows Recovery Console. The J: drive apparently does not exist, and therefore cannot be formatted. The C: drive has the same amount of space as it did beforehand, but now its filesystem is apparently "Unknown" rather than NTFS. Using the "fixboot" command makes no change.

I really do need to figure out how to get this PC back to its original working state and be able to put Vista on another partition very soon because of the promised sale. I'd prefer to only have to wipe the whole drive as a last resort because I spent a couple of hours beforehand uninstalling manufacturer placed free trial software and installing some preferred software as a favor since this is for a friend. From what I can tell, everything concerning the XP partition is as it should be, except something strange is going on with the filesystem and booting process. I'm ok with working in BIOS or any sort of command prompt, burning programs to disc, or even placing programs on a flash drive.

Do you have an XP Media Edition Installation CD?

Not Media Center Edition in particular, but I went into Recovery Console with my XP Pro disc just fine, and it detected where MCE was on the C drive and all. I think that's because the OS's are very close... MCE seems to be just like Pro with a special multimedia-related service pack and updates.

My point is this:

If you can get your hands on a copy of XP Media Center with the matching service pack you can legally use it to re-install your damaged installation, re-size, reformat partitions, and then fully re-install XP. You Legally can't do this with your XP Pro CD. Why you may ask? It is because the product codes will not match. You may Legally use a copy of the exact xp Media Center Edition, and activate it with the existing product key...There are no other ways around this...

FWIW, XP likes to do it's own partitioning...It has problems with third party partitioning managers.

One thing that you can legally do is go to gateway support and purchase recovery CD's from them, which in my opinion is the only way to go since they will put the computer back to a factory fresh condition...Removing all of the junk that you have on it from your ownership. You can install it then install Vista afterwards (again you will have to have a geniune Vista installation CD with a valid key for it's installation). Recovery CD's usually are around $15-$20.

Edited by OldGrumpyBastard, 16 January 2010 - 11:28 PM.

Ugh yeah... see, I have a Gateway recovery disc, but I am extremely hesitant to use it because of the plethora of garbage it will put back on the system. I could MAYBE go with XP Pro since she just said she did not want Home. As far as adding on Vista too, what would I do about partitioning if XP doesn't like 3rd party partition managers? Can it be done upon preparing the drive to install XP? I recall that it was very easy with Vista and it's "shrink" option on its disk manager, but I'm pretty sure XP doesn't have anything like that...

IMO,

Your options are as follows:

Use your recovery disks and remove all of Gateways bloatware after installation.

Use a Valid XP (whatever version CD) run set-up...at the point where it asks you about partitioning....create a size of the first partition...second...etc...you will be asked which partition you want XP install upon...select C:...select format and XP will continue the set-up. Activate with the key that came with the CD not the existing one on the machine. Once XP is installed you can then open computer managment service and format the other partitions that you created in the set-up process...XP likes to do it this way...This should be labeled D: (or whatever and be un-allocated space I think...Can't remember for sure) but at any rate the partition is created and formatted through Windows...

Use a Valid Vista CD...Process for installation should be very similar to XP (just set up a dual boot with Windows 7 and XP this way...7 is almost identical to Vista except smaller footprint) ....Install on the D: partition (or whatever)...finish set-up...Again you will have to activate it with a valid product key.

If you want to get all of the drive paths back in order I would suggest that you unplug everything but monitor, mouse, keyboard, and CD/DVD drives before installing...This should put everything back in order on a fresh installation.

Edited by OldGrumpyBastard, 17 January 2010 - 08:58 AM.